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Sunday, December 6, 2015

The Lifecycle of Microbeads

Above is an infographic I created to show the "lifecycle" of a microbead, a tiny plastic particle that is often found in toothpastes, and beauty products used to exfoliate. And not just one microbead, thousands of them! A single tube of face wash can contain up to 300,000 microbeads! With how may of these products are sold to consumers on a daily basis, you can imagine the number of microbeads terrorizing precious marine life. Yikes!

What's a typical day in the life of a microbead like? After doing my job of "cleaning and exfoliating", I am washed down your drain, remotely unseen. My many friends and I make our way through the sewage system, still unseen by filters and purifiers. We eventually end up in a beautiful river where we gather in the millions and wade through the water. Fish eat us, and get really sick. We pollute the water and make it unsafe for marine life. Live fish that are caught may even contain some of us in their stomachs and flesh, that's when we make our final stop onto the dinner plate of humans.

Plastic water pollution is not worth the extra exfoliation. There are many products that use natural ways to exfoliate. Buy products without plastic microbeads, safe a fish :)